Our perception of Iran was largely through films before protests against the régime took to the streets. Decades back, Iranian cinema had achieved a zenith of excellence, with a steady output of commercial films and elite intellectual interpolations, adding to the land’s rich heritage.
Overwhelming support for the Nezam overthrowing Pahlavis came from intellectuals like filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, also one of the first to be disillusioned when they set up stringent restrictions for the production of films. Makhmalbaf, now resettled in France, tried to justify previous support by calling out Khomeini as a demagogue in his 2012 documentary ‘The Gardener’. Yet, as far as contemporary records go, Khomeini was transparent about his objectives.
The Nezam put Zoroastrians and other minorities into hiding. Women have very few career options, and are restricted from public spaces like mosques and football stadiums. Dancing is illegal. A woman without a hijab is seriously reprimanded by law, with one or more lashes, a fine and imprisonment.
I remember Jafar Panahi’s ‘Se Rokh’ in KIFF, 2018. The auditorium was crammed. It was a social film, the kind Panahi had started off with, like ‘Dayereh’, before his filmmaking took a turn in 2006. Unlike his mentor Kiarostami, he could not keep his social causes detached from the politics shaping them.
Abbas Kiarostami, one of the most influential persons in Iranian cinema, managed to well-balance the nonsense censorship and relevance of his films to Western audiences by shifting to films with kids, males and foreigners. That escapism is contrasted by his assistant Panahi’s handling of social and intellectual responsibility.
When we look back at ‘Ayneh’ (1997), it is an affectionate portrayal of a kindergarten girl set out way home alone because her parents did not show up at the school gate— except for the fact that a girl alone on the streets is frowned upon in that society, and a kid alone is in danger in any metropolis! It is the kind of film that shows your empathy and humour, and is appreciated globally, not unlike ‘Badkonake Sefid’ (1995), which Kiarostami had written for Panahi. But Panahi makes his point. Though a kid, Razieh’s removal of her headscarf triggers an act of defiance in which Nezam sensed an ill omen. They tried to withdraw the film from the Academy Awards.
Panahi was sure that he did not want a career of passive compliance like his colleagues. His films uncovered disturbing aspects of a society that preserves medieval rules protected ferociously by the government.
His daughter’s wish to watch a football match drove him to shoot, in secrecy, ‘Offside’ (2006). The film is about girls arrested from a football stadium, probably by ‘Gašt-e Eršâd’ (‘Morality Police’). It, more than anything else, depicted the burning patriotism of half the population that authorities won’t put to any use.
Panahi was subsequently imprisoned several times and banned from making films, which he fortunately defied, at first not without shakiness. His endeavours set milestones in the art of cinema, which document the sufferings of mankind.
Panahi’s latest work received the Palme d’Or last year. In the midst of a desert landscape, victims are hosting a trial against Eghbal, a tyrannical interrogator of Iranian prison. They had been subjected to torture at his hands when arrested for endangering the ‘Islamic Republic’. To clarify, anything from holding a placard outside a lockout factory to not wearing a headscarf has the same official phrasing in that corrupt system. Vahid got his back broken and needs support to stand straight. His fiancée had committed suicide at Eghbal’s provocation. Hamid was hung upside down for three days and suffered from phases of insanity. Goli was blindfolded and threatened with a noose for hours. Goli and Shiva were sexually assaulted. They are stating their accusations and venting out their suppressed hatred, giving him a chance to confess and say his side, more like a collective conscience than realistic.
With this film, it is as if Panahi declares war against the régime. Till now, he raised a point or two. Here, he puts an entire system on the dock and calls it rotten and obsolete. It is his first film with violence: Eghbal’s kidnapping and the anger of his victims. Before this, he had been awfully calm even about his own harassments.
But all this is not without personal involvement. It is the accomplished filmmaker speaking for himself and acquaintances in prison he ‘left behind upon release’. In ‘Taxi Tehran’ (2015), Panahi appeared as himself and seemed terrified when he thought he heard his interrogator’s voice in a marketplace. In ‘Où en êtes-vous’, he explains to colleague Majid Berzegar that his interrogator would come up time and again in his works because an artist draws characters from around him. He had spoken rather matter-of-factly, but with ‘Yek Tasādof-e Sāde’ we are sure that it was not without bitterness.
Panahi recalled in an interview in France that to avoid conflict with censorship, long ago he used to shoot entirely outdoors because no one wears headscarves at home and the Ministry won’t allow shots of women without them. The ban lifted, Panahi could not return to his old habit. He feels that the headscarf issue has to be addressed differently with the new awakening. We see an increased radicalism in ‘Tasādof’ before his imprisonment last month. He absolutely refuses to compromise or to suffer.
The fight of female Iranians for basic dignity has shaken the régime. Atrocities inflicted on Armita Geravand, Mahsa Amini and others have just been fuel in this volcano. Non-violent protesters are being persecuted and massacred, but as in Gandhi’s movements, they have blood to offer in abundance. The régime is scared with its own cruelty but hesitant to recant. The Iranian flag emoji in X is being rendered as the old Aryan flag with the sun and the lion, not the one of the Nezam. The intellectuals and the masses have shaken hands and have decided to live only if possible with civil liberties.
Now Iran doesn’t need storytellers like Makhmalbaf, not even Kiarostami, who relocated their work abroad for convenience, but ones like Panahi and Rasoulof, who stayed through their fair share of troubles, working towards a new order against all odds.
Whatever they say, the pen (or the camera) itself is not mightier than the sword— but piety is. One hopes that an oppressed people with honest effort can outdo the tyrants. India survived Aurangzeb, Iran will survive Khamenei.
The writer is a research scholar, Dept. Math, IIT Bhilai. Views are personal.